The project involved thoroughly renovating a 660-square-meter space in the city of Santander, turning it into a multipurpose home for a private art collection. Intended as something more than an exhibition gallery, the new space also had to meet the
The Cantabrian Maritime Museum (MMC) in Santander was built between 1975 and 1978, following a design by Vicente Roig Forner and Ángel Hernández Morales. The interior is distributed in three floors around a central patio crowned with a vault of concr
The former headquarters of Banco Mercantil takes up a whole urban block of Santander’s gridded expansion area. The building is a 1900 project by the architect Casimiro Pérez de la Riva (1851-1934). The building is horizontally divided into three part
Subtle interventions enhance a necessary cleaning job in the project of reconstructing a deteriorated port facility and then fitting it out as home to an institution’s collection of artworks.
Located in a development called Somo-Boo, in the Cantabrian capital, this house adopts the classic L arrangement to obtain a protected outdoor space. Rooms interweave under a horizontal lid that acts as a tray for the main volume with its pitched roo
Spain’s leading bank has renovated its headquarters to showcase its rich collection of artworks, and with this it creates a new cultural hub for the city to which it is intimately bound. A gateway between city and sea, the arch that connects the twin
The project remodels the topography of the site to let the museum and the new vegetation rise and grow, filling up the existing city and establishing an active dialogue between the natural landscape, the city, and the sea...
Three longitudinal bands, each containing different programs, organize the new volume and free up space to create a new square whose backdrop is a transparent facade that lets the city observe the circulations and main functions of the building...
The relationship established between the pieces – plinth, museum, administration – aims to create a new public space able to improve the functional, symbolic, and visual conditions of the urban context, taking advantage of the sloping streets around
The cave and the cabin inspire this new public forum, creating a universe of contrasts where timeless spaces – in which museum visitors connect with art – are combined with other ephemeral and changing ones that enable new socialization models...
The Catalan practice of Héctor Mendoza and Mara Partida has won the competition for ideas for the new Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria in Santander, The complex will encompass 18,441 square meters, 7,500 of which will go into an admi
On a plot parallel to the structure of the city, bound by two perimeter paths that trace an elongated form, La Vaguada de las Llamas was a large open space allocated by the city’s master plan to be converted into a public park. Its topographical feat
The Botín Centre, a space for art, culture and education, projecting into the Bay of Santander, restores the ties between the historical part of the city and the sea. The freeway separating the park from the sea has now been rung underground through
By creating a hybrid between a grandstand, a plaza, and a park, the project addresses a wide spectrum of functions while solving the local problem of topographical unevenness.
Conceived as an international landmark in the dissemination of art, culture, and education, and also as a new activity hub to invigorate city life in Santander, the Botín Centre by Renzo Piano involves a complete urban transformation that restores th
The structure of huge steel beams supported by stanchions of very small sections makes it possible for the roof to seem afloat over a space that opens on to the landsape and is delimited by a low masonry wall.
The Museum of Cantabria strives to resemble the mountains that can be seen on a clear day beyond the Las Llamas valley – a new urban park in the heart of Santander –, with their uneven but similar outlines. Instead of the classical composition mechan
En pleno centro de Santander, en el área ocupada anteriormente por un patio de recreo compartido por 1.000 niños distribuidos en tres colegios, debía insertarse un pabellón polideportivo que, además de experimentar un intenso uso escolar, iba a dotar
Al norte de Santander, entre el Sardinero y el futuro parque de la Vaguada de Las Llamas, se encuentran las instalaciones deportivas más importantes de la ciudad: el campo municipal, sede del Racing de Santander, y el nuevo palacio de deportes que se
The project responds to two basic premises, one of an urbanistic nature, marked by contextual conditions, and the other having to do with functional considerations, a reflection on how to teach sailing in a rainy climate. One of the corners points to
Peter Buchanan El primer proyecto construido de Juan Navarro es la casa que diseñó para su hermano. Está situada cerca de Santander, y desde el principio se ha denominado Casa de la Lluvia. Aunque la belleza de la planta impresiona de inmediato, a pr
When in 1979 Paloma Chamorro interviewed Maruja Mallo, clearly the scandalous elderly woman was still the youngster who had ridden into church on a bicycle and walked across Madrid hatless. And as the Botín Centre’s retrospective on her work highligh
After decades of supporting young artists, the Botín Foundation has decided to give its former grant-holders a greater presence at its center in the city of Santander, through works of theirs that also serve to create fresh views of the institution’s
Hanging on strings from ceilings at the Botín Centre facing the Bay of Santander, up to 26 February, are nine of Damián Ortega’s most emblematic mobiles: sculptures suspended in mid-air in which the artist from Mexico City deconstructs everyday objec
With large windows overlooking the Bay of Santander, the Botín Centre is the ideal place in which to hold Ellen Gallagher’s first exhibition in Spain: a dialogue with the Atlantic Ocean by means of compositions presenting multiple layers of materials
The Botín Centre’s current show on Thomas Demand presents his photos of realistic models that he himself makes with paper and cardboard.
The practice of Héctor Mendoza and Mara Partida has won the ideas competition for the Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria in the city of Santander. The jury, which included Fuensanta Nieto of the firm Nieto Sobejano, appreciated the uni
On view through 3 November at the Botín Foundation in Santander is ‘Calder Stories.’ Eighty pieces of different origins are on display in an exhibition that is distinct for two main reasons. First, instead of centering around the American artist’s ca
The job of renovating the Banco Santander headquarters, a massive, grandiose, eclectic building along the Cantabrian capital’s Paseo de Pereda, not far from the Botín Foundation, was given to the British architect David Chipperfield, a renowned exper
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and with an exhibition design by Renzo Piano, the show ‘Calder Stories’ covers five decades in the career of Alexander Calder (1898-1976), unveiling lesser known facts about the work of the American author, like his coll
The author of the ‘four wells and a pond’ built around the Botín Centre building by the water in Santander, Cristina Iglesias – the winner of Spain’s National Visual Arts Award in 1999 – has been invited by the foundation of the Cantabrian banking in
In Santander 23 June was opening day for the Botín Centre, now the most important exhibition space of the Cantabrian capital. It completes an iconic cultural route along Spain’s northern coast that stretches from the City of Culture in Santiago de Co
The meeting of a fisherman and a sailor has produced a miracle in Santander. Back in 2010, Emilio Botín, banker and fisherman, commissioned Renzo Piano, architect and sailor, to build an art center in Santander. Seven years later, the careening volum
Acaba de presentarse el edificio que Renzo Piano construirá para la Fundación Botín en la bahía santanderina, un centro dedicado al arte y la cultura que será, una vez inaugurado en 2014, la primera obra del genovés en España. El Centro de Arte Botín
El Gobierno Regional de Cantabria, cuyas oficinas en un discreto edificio de la calle San Emeterio necesitaban ampliación, convocó en 2001 un concurso de méritos para elegir el arquitecto capaz de dar forma a una nueva sede en el lugar ocupado por la
